Nowhere is the organization of our emotional journey through life exemplified more clearly than in music.

Music transcends age, race and civilisation.

Even the most superficial consideration of the question of the relationship between music and community brings the realization that music is seen to be a necessary part of community rituals, both sacred and secular.

We wed, grieve, march, worship, graduate, celebrate, sport and protest with musical accompaniment.

There can be no society which does not feel the need for upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and the collective ideas, which make its unity and its personality. Through collective gatherings, we experience, however briefly, a sense of belonging to the whole, a common identity.

The public accessibility of music provides a conceptual, emotional and physical medium for communication of common memories and meanings.

Music serves as a record of our own civilization or community and provides a way of gaining insight into cultures other than our own.

Music communicates understanding from one person to another reinforcing cultural or sub cultural groupings even across space.

When belonging is one of the most important foundation stones of our human being, to belong through music to a multicultural, multi-age group for two weeks in a row is a special, rewarding and enriching path.

It is in a perspective of enlargement and non-exclusion that in 1997 I created this course, in which languages flow freely and richly around the making of music.

Arlette Herrenschmidt-Moller

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